An Eclectic Journal of Opinion, History, Poetry and General Bloviating

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Mother’s Day—Woodrow Wilson Made it Official

Anna Jarvis of West Virginia--the mother of Mother's Day

The celebration of Mother’s Day as we know now is
generally credited to Anna Marie Jarvis in
memory of her mother, who died on May 9, 1905.
The first commemorative service was held at the Methodist Church in Grafton,
West Virginia where Jarvis’s mother had been a Sunday school teacheron May 12, 1907.

The
following year on May 10 the church, at Jarvis’s urging, expanded the service
to include honoring all mothers and Jarvis’s friend, Philadelphia merchant prince John
Wanamaker conducted a public observance in the auditorium of this
store.

Jarvis
tirelessly dedicated herself to spreading the observance. She wrote articles and pamphlets, lobbied
city councils, state legislatures, and Congress
for proclamations establishing an official observance. West Virginia was
the first to act, in 1910, followed by several other states over the next
years.

Jarvis’s
efforts paid off when Congress on May 8, 1914 established the second Sunday in
May as Mother’s Day and requesting the President
issue a proclamation. Woodrow Wilson
wasted no time, issuing his proclamation the next day, May 9 making this
the official “birthday” of the Federal observance.

Wilson’s
proclamation directed Americans to
show the flag in honor of mothers who had lost sons in war. That part of the declaration is an indication
that Wilson was probably aware of the earlier efforts of Julia Ward Howe to establish a Mother’s Day observance to protest
war.

Ward’s
moving Mother’s Day Proclamation was
written in 1870 in reaction to the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian
War and called for women across the globe to unite to end war. Although that noble effort never produced
either the movement or the observation that Howe had hoped for, the effort was
well known. When Howe died only four
years earlier full of honors as the writer of the Battle Hymn of the Republic
and one of the most famous American woman of letters, her obituaries revived
interest in her effort, particularly among pacifists.

In recent
years the memory Howe’s Proclamation has been revived by the peace and feminist
movements and by her Unitarian Universalist faith community and has been
re-connected to Jarvis’s celebration.